Network Working Group T. Hansen, Ed.
Request for Comments: 3798 AT&T Laboratories
Obsoletes: 2298 G. Vaudreuil, Ed.
Updates: 3461, 2046 Lucent Technologies
Category: Standards Track May 2004
Message Disposition Notification
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo defines a MIME content-type that may be used by a mail user
agent (MUA) or electronic mail gateway to report the disposition of a
message after it has been successfully delivered to a recipient.
This content-type is intended to be machine-processable. Additional
message headers are also defined to permit Message Disposition
Notifications (MDNs) to be requested by the sender of a message. The
purpose is to extend Internet Mail to support functionality often
found in other messaging systems, such as X.400 and the proprietary
"LAN-based" systems, and often referred to as "read receipts,"
"acknowledgements", or "receipt notifications." The intention is to
do this while respecting privacy concerns, which have often been
expressed when such functions have been discussed in the past.
Because many messages are sent between the Internet and other
messaging systems (such as X.400 or the proprietary "LAN-based"
systems), the MDN protocol is designed to be useful in a multi-
protocol messaging environment. To this end, the protocol described
in this memo provides for the carriage of "foreign" addresses, in
addition to those normally used in Internet Mail. Additional
attributes may also be defined to support "tunneling" of foreign
notifications through Internet Mail.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 20041. Introduction
This memo defines a [RFC-MIME-MEDIA] content-type for message
disposition notifications (MDNs). An MDN can be used to notify the
sender of a message of any of several conditions that may occur after
successful delivery, such as display of the message contents,
printing of the message, deletion (without display) of the message,
or the recipient's refusal to provide MDNs. The
"message/disposition-notification" content-type defined herein is
intended for use within the framework of the "multipart/report"
content type defined in [RFC-REPORT].
This memo defines the format of the notifications and the [RFC-
MSGFMT] headers used to request them.
1.1. Purposes
The MDNs defined in this memo are expected to serve several purposes:
(a) Inform human beings of the disposition of messages after
successful delivery, in a manner that is largely independent of
human language;
(b) Allow mail user agents to keep track of the disposition of
messages sent, by associating returned MDNs with earlier message
transmissions;
(c) Convey disposition notification requests and disposition
notifications between Internet Mail and "foreign" mail systems
via a gateway;
(d) Allow "foreign" notifications to be tunneled through a MIME-
capable message system and back into the original messaging
system that issued the original notification, or even to a third
messaging system;
(e) Allow language-independent, yet reasonably precise, indications
of the disposition of a message to be delivered.
1.2. Requirements
These purposes place the following constraints on the notification
protocol:
(a) It must be readable by humans, and must be machine-parsable.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
(b) It must provide enough information to allow message senders (or
their user agents) to unambiguously associate an MDN with the
message that was sent and the original recipient address for
which the MDN was issued (if such information is available),
even if the message was forwarded to another recipient address.
(c) It must also be able to describe the disposition of a message
independent of any particular human language or of the
terminology of any particular mail system.
(d) The specification must be extensible in order to accommodate
future requirements.
1.3. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC-KEYWORDS].
All syntax descriptions use the ABNF specified by [RFC-MSGFMT], in
which the lexical tokens (used below) are defined: "atom", "CRLF",
"mailbox", "msg-id", and "text". The following lexical tokens are
defined in the definition of the Content-Type header in [RFC-MIME-
BODY]: "attribute" and "value".
2. Requesting Message Disposition Notifications
Message disposition notifications are requested by including a
Disposition-Notification-To header in the message. Further
information to be used by the recipient's MUA in generating the MDN
may be provided by also including Original-Recipient and/or
Disposition-Notification-Options headers in the message.
2.1. The Disposition-Notification-To Header
A request for the receiving user agent to issue message disposition
notifications is made by placing a Disposition-Notification-To header
into the message. The syntax of the header is
mdn-request-header = "Disposition-Notification-To" ":"
mailbox *("," mailbox)
The presence of a Disposition-Notification-To header in a message is
merely a request for an MDN. The recipients' user agents are always
free to silently ignore such a request. Alternatively, an explicit
denial of the request for information about the disposition of the
message may be sent using the "denied" disposition in an MDN.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
An MDN MUST NOT itself have a Disposition-Notification-To header. An
MDN MUST NOT be generated in response to an MDN.
A user agent MUST NOT issue more than one MDN on behalf of each
particular recipient. That is, once an MDN has been issued on behalf
of a recipient, no further MDNs may be issued on behalf of that
recipient, even if another disposition is performed on the message.
However, if a message is forwarded, an MDN may have been issued for
the recipient doing the forwarding and the recipient of the forwarded
message may also cause an MDN to be generated.
While Internet standards normally do not specify the behavior of user
interfaces, it is strongly recommended that the user agent obtain the
user's consent before sending an MDN. This consent could be obtained
for each message through some sort of prompt or dialog box, or
globally through the user's setting of a preference. The user might
also indicate globally that MDNs are to never be sent or that a
"denied" MDN is always sent in response to a request for an MDN.
MDNs SHOULD NOT be sent automatically if the address in the
Disposition-Notification-To header differs from the address in the
Return-Path header (see [RFC-MSGFMT]). In this case, confirmation
from the user SHOULD be obtained, if possible. If obtaining consent
is not possible (e.g., because the user is not online at the time),
then an MDN SHOULD NOT be sent.
Confirmation from the user SHOULD be obtained (or no MDN sent) if
there is no Return-Path header in the message, or if there is more
than one distinct address in the Disposition-Notification-To header.
The comparison of the addresses should be done using only the addr-
spec (local-part "@" domain) portion, excluding any phrase and route.
The comparison MUST be case-sensitive for the local-part and case-
insensitive for the domain part.
If the message contains more than one Return-Path header, the
implementation may pick one to use for the comparison, or treat the
situation as a failure of the comparison.
The reason for not automatically sending an MDN if the comparison
fails or more than one address is specified is to reduce the
possibility of mail loops and of MDNs being used for mail bombing.
A message that contains a Disposition-Notification-To header SHOULD
also contain a Message-ID header as specified in [RFC-MSGFMT]. This
will permit automatic correlation of MDNs with their original
messages by user agents.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
If the request for message disposition notifications for some
recipients and not others is desired, two copies of the message
should be sent, one with a Disposition-Notification-To header and one
without. Many of the other headers of the message (e.g., To, Cc)
will be the same in both copies. The recipients in the respective
message envelopes determine for whom message disposition
notifications are requested and for whom they are not. If desired,
the Message-ID header may be the same in both copies of the message.
Note that there are other situations (e.g., Bcc) in which it is
necessary to send multiple copies of a message with slightly
different headers. The combination of such situations and the need
to request MDNs for a subset of all recipients may result in more
than two copies of a message being sent, some with a Disposition-
Notification-To header and some without.
Messages posted to newsgroups SHOULD NOT have a Disposition-
Notification-To header.
2.2. The Disposition-Notification-Options Header
Future extensions to this specification may require that information
be supplied to the recipient's MUA for additional control over how
and what MDNs are generated. The Disposition-Notification-Options
header provides an extensible mechanism for such information. The
syntax of this header is as follows:
Disposition-Notification-Options =
"Disposition-Notification-Options" ":"
disposition-notification-parameters
disposition-notification-parameters = parameter *(";" parameter)
parameter = attribute "=" importance "," value *("," value)
importance = "required" / "optional"
An importance of "required" indicates that interpretation of the
parameter is necessary for proper generation of an MDN in response to
this request. If an MUA does not understand the meaning of the
parameter, it MUST NOT generate an MDN with any disposition type
other than "failed" in response to the request. An importance of
"optional" indicates that an MUA that does not understand the meaning
of this parameter MAY generate an MDN in response anyway, ignoring
the value of the parameter.
No parameters are defined in this specification. Parameters may be
defined in the future by later revisions or extensions to this
specification. Parameter attribute names beginning with "X-" will
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
never be defined as standard names; such names are reserved for
experimental use. MDN parameter names not beginning with "X-" MUST
be registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and
described in a standards-track RFC or an experimental RFC approved by
the IESG. (See Section 10 for a registration form.)
If a required parameter is not understood or contains some sort of
error, the receiving MUA SHOULD issue an MDN with a disposition type
of "failed" (see Section 3.2.6), and include a Failure field (see
Section 3.2.7) that further describes the problem. MDNs with the
disposition type of "failed" and a "Failure" field MAY also be
generated when other types of errors are detected in the parameters
of the Disposition-Notification-Options header.
However, an MDN with a disposition type of "failed" MUST NOT be
generated if the user has indicated a preference that MDNs are not to
be sent. If user consent would be required for an MDN of some other
disposition type to be sent, user consent SHOULD also be obtained
before sending an MDN with a disposition type of "failed".
2.3. The Original-Recipient Header
Since electronic mail addresses may be rewritten while the message is
in transit, it is useful for the original recipient address to be
made available by the delivering MTA. The delivering MTA may be able
to obtain this information from the ORCPT parameter of the SMTP RCPT
TO command, as defined in [RFC-SMTP] and [RFC-DSN-SMTP].
[RFC-DSN-SMTP] is amended as follows: If the ORCPT information is
available, the delivering MTA SHOULD insert an Original-Recipient
header at the beginning of the message (along with the Return-Path
header). The delivering MTA MAY delete any other Original-Recipient
headers that occur in the message. The syntax of this header is as
follows:
original-recipient-header =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
The address-type and generic-address token are as specified in the
description of the Original-Recipient field in section 3.2.3.
The purpose of carrying the original recipient information and
returning it in the MDN is to permit automatic correlation of MDNs
with the original message on a per-recipient basis.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 20042.4. Use with the Message/Partial Content Type
The use of the headers Disposition-Notification-To, Disposition-
Notification-Options, and Original-Recipient with the MIME
message/partial content type ([RFC-MIME-MEDIA]) requires further
definition.
When a message is segmented into two or more message/partial
fragments, the three headers mentioned in the above paragraph SHOULD
be placed in the "inner" or "enclosed" message (using the terms of
[RFC-MIME-MEDIA]). These headers SHOULD NOT be used in the headers
of any of the fragments themselves.
When the multiple message/partial fragments are reassembled, the
following applies. If these headers occur along with the other
headers of a message/partial fragment message, they pertain to an MDN
that will be generated for the fragment. If these headers occur in
the headers of the "inner" or "enclosed" message (using the terms of
[RFC-MIME-MEDIA]), they pertain to an MDN that will be generated for
the reassembled message. Section 5.2.2.1 of [RFC-MIME-MEDIA]) is
amended to specify that, in addition to the headers specified there,
the three headers described in this specification are to be appended,
in order, to the headers of the reassembled message. Any occurrences
of the three headers defined here in the headers of the initial
enclosing message must not be copied to the reassembled message.
3. Format of a Message Disposition Notification
A message disposition notification is a MIME message with a top-level
content-type of multipart/report (defined in [RFC-REPORT]). When
multipart/report content is used to transmit an MDN:
(a) The report-type parameter of the multipart/report content is
"disposition-notification".
(b) The first component of the multipart/report contains a human-
readable explanation of the MDN, as described in [RFC-REPORT].
(c) The second component of the multipart/report is of content-type
message/disposition-notification, described in section 3.1 of
this document.
(d) If the original message or a portion of the message is to be
returned to the sender, it appears as the third component of the
multipart/report. The decision of whether or not to return the
message or part of the message is up to the MUA generating the
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
MDN. However, in the case of encrypted messages requesting
MDNs, encrypted message text MUST be returned, if it is returned
at all, only in its original encrypted form.
NOTE: For message disposition notifications gatewayed from foreign
systems, the headers of the original message may not be available.
In this case, the third component of the MDN may be omitted, or it
may contain "simulated" [RFC-MSGFMT] headers that contain equivalent
information. In particular, it is very desirable to preserve the
subject and date fields from the original message.
The MDN MUST be addressed (in both the message header and the
transport envelope) to the address(es) from the Disposition-
Notification-To header from the original message for which the MDN is
being generated.
The From field of the message header of the MDN MUST contain the
address of the person for whom the message disposition notification
is being issued.
The envelope sender address (i.e., SMTP MAIL FROM) of the MDN MUST be
null (<>), specifying that no Delivery Status Notification messages
or other messages indicating successful or unsuccessful delivery are
to be sent in response to an MDN.
A message disposition notification MUST NOT itself request an MDN.
That is, it MUST NOT contain a Disposition-Notification-To header.
The Message-ID header (if present) for an MDN MUST be different from
the Message-ID of the message for which the MDN is being issued.
A particular MDN describes the disposition of exactly one message for
exactly one recipient. Multiple MDNs may be generated as a result of
one message submission, one per recipient. However, due to the
circumstances described in Section 2.1, MDNs may not be generated for
some recipients for which MDNs were requested.
3.1. The message/disposition-notification content-type
The message/disposition-notification content-type is defined as
follows:
MIME type name: message
MIME subtype name: disposition-notification
Optional parameters: none
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
Encoding considerations: "7bit" encoding is sufficient and
MUST be used to maintain readability
when viewed by non-MIME mail readers.
Security considerations: discussed in section 6 of this memo.
The message/disposition-notification report type for use in the
multipart/report is "disposition-notification".
The body of a message/disposition-notification consists of one or
more "fields" formatted according to the ABNF of [RFC-MSGFMT] header
"fields". The syntax of the message/disposition-notification content
is as follows:
disposition-notification-content = [ reporting-ua-field CRLF ]
[ mdn-gateway-field CRLF ]
[ original-recipient-field CRLF ]
final-recipient-field CRLF
[ original-message-id-field CRLF ]
disposition-field CRLF
*( failure-field CRLF )
*( error-field CRLF )
*( warning-field CRLF )
*( extension-field CRLF )
3.1.1. General conventions for fields
Since these fields are defined according to the rules of [RFC-
MSGFMT], the same conventions for continuation lines and comments
apply. Notification fields may be continued onto multiple lines by
beginning each additional line with a SPACE or HTAB. Text that
appears in parentheses is considered a comment and not part of the
contents of that notification field. Field names are case-
insensitive, so the names of notification fields may be spelled in
any combination of upper and lower case letters. Comments in
notification fields may use the "encoded-word" construct defined in
[RFC-MIME-HEADER].
3.1.2. "*-type" subfields
Several fields consist of a "-type" subfield, followed by a semi-
colon, followed by "*text". For these fields, the keyword used in
the address-type or MTA-type subfield indicates the expected format
of the address or MTA-name that follows.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
The "-type" subfields are defined as follows:
(a) An "address-type" specifies the format of a mailbox address.
For example, Internet Mail addresses use the "rfc822" address-
type.
address-type = atom
(b) An "MTA-name-type" specifies the format of a mail transfer agent
name. For example, for an SMTP server on an Internet host, the
MTA name is the domain name of that host, and the "dns" MTA-
name-type is used.
mta-name-type = atom
Values for address-type and mta-name-type are case-insensitive.
Thus, address-type values of "RFC822" and "rfc822" are equivalent.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) maintains a registry
of address-type and mta-name-type values, along with descriptions of
the meanings of each, or a reference to one or more specifications
that provide such descriptions. (The "rfc822" address-type is
defined in [RFC-DSN-SMTP].) Registration forms for address-type and
mta-name-type appear in [RFC-DSN-FORMAT].
3.2. Message/disposition-notification Fields3.2.1. The Reporting-UA field
reporting-ua-field = "Reporting-UA" ":" ua-name
[ ";" ua-product ]
ua-name = *text
ua-product = *text
The Reporting-UA field is defined as follows:
An MDN describes the disposition of a message after it has been
delivered to a recipient. In all cases, the Reporting-UA is the MUA
that performed the disposition described in the MDN. This field is
optional, but recommended. For Internet Mail user agents, it is
recommended that this field contain both: the DNS name of the
particular instance of the MUA that generated the MDN, and the name
of the product. For example,
Reporting-UA: pc.example.com; Foomail 97.1
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
If the reporting MUA consists of more than one component (e.g., a
base program and plug-ins), this may be indicated by including a list
of product names.
3.2.2. The MDN-Gateway field
The MDN-Gateway field indicates the name of the gateway or MTA that
translated a foreign (non-Internet) message disposition notification
into this MDN. This field MUST appear in any MDN that was translated
by a gateway from a foreign system into MDN format, and MUST NOT
appear otherwise.
mdn-gateway-field = "MDN-Gateway" ":" mta-name-type ";" mta-name
mta-name = *text
For gateways into Internet Mail, the MTA-name-type will normally be
"smtp", and the mta-name will be the Internet domain name of the
gateway.
3.2.3. Original-Recipient field
The Original-Recipient field indicates the original recipient address
as specified by the sender of the message for which the MDN is being
issued. For Internet Mail messages, the value of the Original-
Recipient field is obtained from the Original-Recipient header from
the message for which the MDN is being generated. If there is no
Original-Recipient header in the message, then the Original-Recipient
field MUST be omitted, unless the same information is reliably
available some other way. If there is an Original-Recipient header
in the original message (or original recipient information is
reliably available some other way), then the Original-Recipient field
must be supplied. If there is more than one Original-Recipient
header in the message, the MUA may choose the one to use, or act as
if no Original-Recipient header is present.
original-recipient-field =
"Original-Recipient" ":" address-type ";"
generic-address
generic-address = *text
The address-type field indicates the type of the original recipient
address. If the message originated within the Internet, the
address-type field will normally be "rfc822", and the address will be
according to the syntax specified in [RFC-MSGFMT]. The value
"unknown" should be used if the Reporting MUA cannot determine the
type of the original recipient address from the message envelope.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
This address is the same as that provided by the sender and can be
used to automatically correlate MDN reports with original messages on
a per recipient basis.
3.2.4. Final-Recipient field
The Final-Recipient field indicates the recipient for which the MDN
is being issued. This field MUST be present.
The syntax of the field is as follows:
final-recipient-field =
"Final-Recipient" ":" address-type ";" generic-address
The generic-address subfield of the Final-Recipient field MUST
contain the mailbox address of the recipient (from the From header of
the MDN) as it was when the MDN was generated by the MUA.
The Final-Recipient address may differ from the address originally
provided by the sender, because it may have been transformed during
forwarding and gatewaying into a totally unrecognizable mess.
However, in the absence of the optional Original-Recipient field, the
Final-Recipient field and any returned content may be the only
information available with which to correlate the MDN with a
particular message recipient.
The address-type subfield indicates the type of address expected by
the reporting MTA in that context. Recipient addresses obtained via
SMTP will normally be of address-type "rfc822".
Since mailbox addresses (including those used in the Internet) may be
case sensitive, the case of alphabetic characters in the address MUST
be preserved.
3.2.5. Original-Message-ID field
The Original-Message-ID field indicates the message-ID of the message
for which the MDN is being issued. It is obtained from the Message-
ID header of the message for which the MDN is issued. This field
MUST be present if the original message contained a Message-ID
header. The syntax of the field is as follows:
original-message-id-field =
"Original-Message-ID" ":" msg-id
The msg-id token is as specified in [RFC-MSGFMT].
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 20043.2.6. Disposition field
The Disposition field indicates the action performed by the
Reporting-MUA on behalf of the user. This field MUST be present.
The syntax for the Disposition field is:
disposition-field =
"Disposition" ":" disposition-mode ";"
disposition-type
[ "/" disposition-modifier
*( "," disposition-modifier ) ]
disposition-mode = action-mode "/" sending-mode
action-mode = "manual-action" / "automatic-action"
sending-mode = "MDN-sent-manually" / "MDN-sent-automatically"
disposition-type = "displayed"
/ "deleted"
disposition-modifier = "error"
/ disposition-modifier-extension
disposition-modifier-extension = atom
The disposition-mode, disposition-type, and disposition-modifier may
be spelled in any combination of upper and lower case characters.
3.2.6.1. Disposition modes
The following disposition modes are defined:
"manual-action" The disposition described by the disposition
type was a result of an explicit instruction
by the user rather than some sort of
automatically performed action.
"automatic-action" The disposition described by the disposition
type was a result of an automatic action,
rather than an explicit instruction by the
user for this message.
"Manual-action" and "automatic-action" are mutually exclusive. One
or the other MUST be specified.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
"MDN-sent-manually" The user explicitly gave permission for this
particular MDN to be sent.
"MDN-sent-automatically"
The MDN was sent because the MUA had
previously been configured to do so
automatically.
"MDN-sent-manually" and "MDN-sent-automatically" are mutually
exclusive. One or the other MUST be specified.
3.2.6.2. Disposition types
The following disposition-types are defined:
"displayed" The message has been displayed by the MUA
to someone reading the recipient's mailbox.
There is no guarantee that the content has
been read or understood.
"deleted" The message has been deleted. The
recipient may or may not have seen the
message. The recipient might "undelete"
the message at a later time and read the
message.
3.2.6.3. Disposition modifiers
Only the extension disposition modifiers is defined:
disposition-modifier-extension
Disposition modifiers may be defined
in the future by later revisions
or extensions to this specification.
Disposition value names beginning with "X-"
will never be defined as standard values;
such names are reserved for experimental
use. MDN disposition value names NOT
beginning with "X-" MUST be registered with
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) and described in a standards-track
RFC or an experimental RFC approved by the
IESG. (See Section 10 for a registration
form.) MDNs with disposition modifier
names not understood by the receiving MUA
MAY be silently ignored or placed in the
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
user's mailbox without special
interpretation. They MUST not cause any
error message to be sent to the sender of
the MDN.
If an MUA developer does not wish to register the meanings of such
disposition modifier extensions, "X-" modifiers may be used for this
purpose. To avoid name collisions, the name of the MUA
implementation should follow the "X-", (e.g., "X-Foomail-").
It is not required that an MUA be able to generate all of the
possible values of the Disposition field.
A user agent MUST NOT issue more than one MDN on behalf of each
particular recipient. That is, once an MDN has been issued on behalf
of a recipient, no further MDNs may be issued on behalf of that
recipient, even if another disposition is performed on the message.
However, if a message is forwarded, a "dispatched" MDN may be issued
for the recipient doing the forwarding and the recipient of the
forwarded message may also cause an MDN to be generated.
3.2.7. Failure, Error, and Warning fields
The Failure, Error, and Warning fields are used to supply additional
information in the form of text messages when the "failure"
disposition type, "error" disposition modifier, and/or the "warning"
disposition modifier appear. The syntax is as follows:
failure-field = "Failure" ":" *text
error-field = "Error" ":" *text
warning-field = "Warning" ":" *text
3.3. Extension-fields
Additional MDN fields may be defined in the future by later revisions
or extensions to this specification. Extension-field names beginning
with "X-" will never be defined as standard fields; such names are
reserved for experimental use. MDN field names NOT beginning with
"X-" MUST be registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) and described in a standards-track RFC or an experimental RFC
approved by the IESG. (See Section 10 for a registration form.)
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
MDN Extension-fields may be defined for the following reasons:
(a) To allow additional information from foreign disposition reports
to be tunneled through Internet MDNs. The names of such MDN
fields should begin with an indication of the foreign
environment name (e.g., X400-Physical-Forwarding-Address).
(b) To allow transmission of diagnostic information that is specific
to a particular mail user agent (MUA). The names of such MDN
fields should begin with an indication of the MUA implementation
that produced the MDN (e.g., Foomail-information).
If an application developer does not wish to register the meanings of
such extension fields, "X-" fields may be used for this purpose. To
avoid name collisions, the name of the application implementation
should follow the "X-", (e.g., "X-Foomail-Log-ID" or "X-Foomail-EDI-
info").
4. Timeline of events
The following timeline shows when various events in the processing of
a message and generation of MDNs take place:
-- User composes message
-- User tells MUA to send message
-- MUA passes message to MTA (original recipient information passed
along)
-- MTA sends message to next MTA
-- Final MTA receives message
-- Final MTA delivers message to MUA (possibly generating a DSN)
-- MUA performs automatic processing and generates corresponding MDNs
("dispatched", "processed", "deleted", "denied", or "failed"
disposition type with "automatic-action" and "MDN-sent-
automatically" disposition modes)
-- MUA displays list of messages to user
-- User selects a message and requests that some action be performed
on it.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
-- MUA performs requested action and, with user's permission, sends
an appropriate MDN ("displayed", "dispatched", "processed",
"deleted", "denied", or "failed" disposition type, with "manual-
action" and "MDN-sent-manually" or "MDN-sent-automatically"
disposition mode).
-- User possibly performs other actions on message, but no further
MDNs are generated.
5. Conformance and Usage Requirements
An MUA or gateway conforms to this specification if it generates MDNs
according to the protocol defined in this memo. It is not necessary
to be able to generate all of the possible values of the Disposition
field.
MUAs and gateways MUST NOT generate the Original-Recipient field of
an MDN unless the mail protocols provide the address originally
specified by the sender at the time of submission. Ordinary SMTP
does not make that guarantee, but the SMTP extension defined in
[RFC-DSN-SMTP] permits such information to be carried in the envelope
if it is available. The Original-Recipient header defined in this
document provides a way for the MTA to pass the original recipient
address to the MUA.
Each sender-specified recipient address may result in more than one
MDN. If an MDN is requested for a recipient that is forwarded to
multiple recipients of an "alias" (as defined in [RFC-DSN-SMTP],
section 6.2.7.3), each of the recipients may issue an MDN.
Successful distribution of a message to a mailing list exploder
SHOULD be considered the final disposition of the message. A mailing
list exploder MAY issue an MDN with a disposition type of "processed"
and disposition modes of "automatic-action" and "MDN-sent-
automatically" indicating that the message has been forwarded to the
list. In this case, the request for MDNs is not propagated to the
members of the list.
Alternatively, the mailing list exploder MAY issue no MDN and
propagate the request for MDNs to all members of the list. The
latter behavior is not recommended for any but small, closely knit
lists, as it might cause large numbers of MDNs to be generated and
may cause confidential subscribers to the list to be revealed. The
mailing list exploder MAY also direct MDNs to itself, correlate them,
and produce a report to the original sender of the message.
This specification places no restrictions on the processing of MDNs
received by user agents or mailing lists.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 20046. Security Considerations
The following security considerations apply when using MDNs:
6.1. Forgery
MDNs may be forged as easily as ordinary Internet electronic mail.
User agents and automatic mail handling facilities (such as mail
distribution list exploders) that wish to make automatic use of MDNs
should take appropriate precautions to minimize the potential damage
from denial-of-service attacks.
Security threats related to forged MDNs include the sending of:
(a) A falsified disposition notification when the indicated
disposition of the message has not actually occurred,
(b) Unsolicited MDNs
6.2. Privacy
Another dimension of security is privacy. There may be cases in
which a message recipient does not wish the disposition of messages
addressed to him to be known, or is concerned that the sending of
MDNs may reveal other sensitive information (e.g., when the message
was read). In this situation, it is acceptable for the MUA to issue
"denied" MDNs or to silently ignore requests for MDNs.
If the Disposition-Notification-To header is passed on unmodified
when a message is distributed to the subscribers of a mailing list,
the subscribers to the list may be revealed to the sender of the
original message by the generation of MDNs.
Headers of the original message returned in part 3 of the
multipart/report could reveal confidential information about host
names and/or network topology inside a firewall.
An unencrypted MDN could reveal confidential information about an
encrypted message, especially if all or part of the original message
is returned in part 3 of the multipart/report. Encrypted MDNs are
not defined in this specification.
In general, any optional MDN field may be omitted if the Reporting
MUA site or user determines that inclusion of the field would impose
too great a compromise of site confidentiality. The need for such
confidentiality must be balanced against the utility of the omitted
information in MDNs.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
In some cases, someone with access to the message stream may use the
MDN request mechanism to monitor the mail reading habits of a target.
If the target is known to generate MDN reports, they could add a
disposition-notification-to field containing the envelope from
address along with a source route. The source route is ignored in
the comparison so the addresses will always match. But if the source
route is honored when the notification is sent, it could direct the
message to some other destination. This risk can be minimized by not
sending MDN's automatically.
6.3. Non-Repudiation
MDNs do not provide non-repudiation with proof of delivery. Within
the framework of today's Internet Mail, the MDNs defined in this
document provide valuable information to the mail user; however, MDNs
cannot be relied upon as a guarantee that a message was or was not
seen by the recipient. Even if MDNs are not actively forged, they
may be lost in transit. The recipient may bypass the MDN issuing
mechanism in some manner.
One possible solution for this purpose can be found in RFC 2634
[SEC-SERVICES].
6.4. Mail Bombing
The MDN request mechanism introduces an additional way of mailbombing
a mailbox. The MDN request notification provides an address to which
MDN's should be sent. It is possible for an attacking agent to send
a potentially large set of messages to otherwise unsuspecting third
party recipients with a false "disposition-notification-to:" address.
Automatic, or simplistic processing of such requests would result in
a flood of MDN notifications to the target of the attack. Such an
attack could overrun the capacity of the targeted mailbox and deny
service.
For that reason, MDN's SHOULD NOT be sent automatically where the
"disposition-notification-to:" address is different from the envelope
MAIL FROM address. See section 2.1 for further discussion.
7. Collected Grammar
NOTE: The following lexical tokens are defined in [RFC-MSGFMT]:
atom, CRLF, mailbox, msg-id, text. The definitions of attribute and
value are as in the definition of the Content-Type header in [RFC-
MIME-BODY].
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 20048.1. Gatewaying from other mail systems to MDNs
A mail gateway may issue an MDN to convey the contents of a "foreign"
disposition notification over Internet Mail. When there are
appropriate mappings from the foreign notification elements to MDN
fields, the information may be transmitted in those MDN fields.
Additional information (such as might be needed to tunnel the foreign
notification through the Internet) may be defined in extension MDN
fields. (Such fields should be given names that identify the foreign
mail protocol, e.g., X400-* for X.400 protocol elements).
The gateway must attempt to supply reasonable values for the
Reporting-UA, Final-Recipient, and Disposition fields. These will
normally be obtained by translating the values from the foreign
notification into their Internet-style equivalents. However, some
loss of information is to be expected.
The sender-specified recipient address and the original message-id,
if present in the foreign notification, should be preserved in the
Original-Recipient and Original-Message-ID fields.
The gateway should also attempt to preserve the "final" recipient
address from the foreign system. Whenever possible, foreign protocol
elements should be encoded as meaningful printable ASCII strings.
For MDNs produced from foreign disposition notifications, the name of
the gateway MUST appear in the MDN-Gateway field of the MDN.
8.2. Gatewaying from MDNs to other mail systems
It may be possible to gateway MDNs from the Internet into a foreign
mail system. The primary purpose of such gatewaying is to convey
disposition information in a form that is usable by the destination
system. A secondary purpose is to allow "tunneling" of MDNs through
foreign mail systems in case the MDN may be gatewayed back into the
Internet.
In general, the recipient of the MDN (i.e., the sender of the
original message) will want to know, for each recipient: the closest
available approximation to the original recipient address, and the
disposition (displayed, printed, etc.).
If possible, the gateway should attempt to preserve the Original-
Recipient address and Original-Message-ID (if present) in the
resulting foreign disposition report.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
If it is possible to tunnel an MDN through the destination
environment, the gateway specification may define a means of
preserving the MDN information in the disposition reports used by
that environment.
8.3. Gatewaying of MDN-requests to other mail systems
By use of the separate disposition-notification-to request header,
this specification offers a richer functionality than most, if not
all, other email systems. In most other email systems, the
notification recipient is identical to the message sender as
indicated in the "from" address. There are two interesting cases
when gatewaying into such systems:
1) If the address in the disposition-notification-to header is
identical to the address in the SMTP "MAIL FROM", the expected
behavior will result, even if the disposition-notification-to
information is lost. Systems should propagate the MDN request.
2) If the address in the disposition-notification-to header is
different from the address in the SMTP "MAIL FROM", gatewaying
into a foreign system without a separate notification address will
result in unintended behavior. This is especially important when
the message arrives via a mailing list expansion software that may
specifically replace the SMTP "MAIL FROM" address with an
alternate address. In such cases, the MDN request should not be
gatewayed and should be silently dropped. This is consistent with
other forms of non-support for MDN.
9. Example
NOTE: This example is provided as illustration only, and is not
considered part of the MDN protocol specification. If the example
conflicts with the protocol definition above, the example is wrong.
Likewise, the use of *-type subfield names or extension fields in
this example is not to be construed as a definition for those type
names or extension fields.
This is an MDN issued after a message has been displayed to the user
of an Internet Mail user agent.
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 00:19:00 (EDT) -0400
From: Joe Recipient <Joe_Recipient@example.com>
Message-Id: <199509200019.12345@example.com>
Subject: Disposition notification
To: Jane Sender <Jane_Sender@example.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=disposition-notification;
boundary="RAA14128.773615765/example.com"
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
The message sent on 1995 Sep 19 at 13:30:00 (EDT) -0400 to Joe
Recipient <Joe_Recipient@example.com> with subject "First draft of
report" has been displayed. This is no guarantee that the message
has been read or understood.
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
content-type: message/disposition-notification
Reporting-UA: joes-pc.cs.example.com; Foomail 97.1
Original-Recipient: rfc822;Joe_Recipient@example.com
Final-Recipient: rfc822;Joe_Recipient@example.com
Original-Message-ID: <199509192301.23456@example.org>
Disposition: manual-action/MDN-sent-manually; displayed
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com
content-type: message/rfc822
[original message optionally goes here]
--RAA14128.773615765/example.com--
10. IANA Considerations
This document specifies three types of parameters that must be
registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
The forms below are for use when registering a new parameter name for
the Disposition-Notification-Options header, a new disposition
modifier name, or a new MDN extension field. Each piece of
information required by a registration form may be satisfied either
by providing the information on the form itself, or by including a
reference to a published, publicly available specification that
includes the necessary information. IANA MAY reject registrations
because of incomplete registration forms or incomplete
specifications.
To register, complete the following applicable form and send it via
electronic mail to <IANA@IANA.ORG>.
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 200410.1. Disposition-Notification-Options header parameter names
A registration for a Disposition-Notification-Options header
parameter name MUST include the following information:
(a) The proposed parameter name.
(b) The syntax for parameter values, specified using BNF, ABNF,
regular expressions, or other non-ambiguous language.
(c) If parameter values are not composed entirely of graphic
characters from the US-ASCII repertoire, a specification for how
they are to be encoded as graphic US-ASCII characters in a
Disposition-Notification-Options header.
(d) A reference to a standards track RFC or experimental RFC
approved by the IESG that describes the semantics of the
parameter values.
10.2. Disposition modifier names
A registration for a disposition-modifier name (used in the
Disposition field of a message/disposition-notification) MUST include
the following information:
(a) The proposed disposition-modifier name.
(b) A reference to a standards track RFC or experimental RFC
approved by the IESG that describes the semantics of the
disposition modifier.
10.3. MDN extension field names
A registration for an MDN extension-field name MUST include the
following information:
(a) The proposed extension field name.
(b) The syntax for extension values, specified using BNF, ABNF,
regular expressions, or other non-ambiguous language.
(c) If extension-field values are not composed entirely of graphic
characters from the US-ASCII repertoire, a specification for how
they are to be encoded as graphic US-ASCII characters in a
Disposition-Notification-Options header.
Hansen & Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 26]

RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004Appendix A - Changes from RFC 2298
The document has new editors.
The dispositions "denied", and "failed" were removed from the
document reflecting the lack of implementation or usage at this time.
The disposition modifiers "warning", "superseded", "expired",
"mailbox-terminated" have not seen actual implementation. They have
been deleted from this document. The extension modifier, as of yet
unused, has been retained for future extension.
General editorial cleanups include spelling, grammar, and consistency
in usage of terms.
The document has modified BNF for disposition notification options to
eliminate the need for dummy values where not otherwise needed.
Authors' Addresses
Tony Hansen
AT&T Laboratories
Middletown, NJ 07748
USA
Voice: +1-732-420-8934
EMail: tony+rfc3798@maillennium.att.com
Gregory M. Vaudreuil
Lucent Technologies
7291 Williamson Rd
Dallas, TX 75214
USA
Voice: +1 214 823 9325
EMail: GregV@ieee.org
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RFC 3798 Message Disposition Notification May 2004
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). This document is subject
to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
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Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Hansen & Vaudreuil Standards Track [Page 30]